Transcript – Tracking the Genes Underlying Seasonal Migration

Millions of songbirds migrate across North America each year. Decades of research has shown that migration is genetically determined, but we still know next to nothing about the actual genes that underlie this behavior. This knowledge gap derives from our inability to track songbirds over the full year and obtain genome wide data from non-moral organisms. We are using Motus a next generation sequencing to fill this gap. Our results thus far relate to Motus and focus on a hybrid zone between two subspecies of Swainson’s thrushes that hybridize in western North America but take different routes on migration motus as an automated radio telemetry system in North America. The system consists of more than 800 radio towers that pick up any bird fitted with a radio tag that is emitting at the correct frequency. These data are then processed through a centralized database and made publicly available. You can see example Moedas Radio Towers and panel of the figure, along with a thrush fitted with a radio tag. Locations of existing Motus towers are shown in Panel B of the figure as orange and yellow dots. As you can see, most of these towers are actually located in the East. Accordingly, we pioneered an extension of this system West or the hybrid zone between Thrush’s occurs, establishing a fence of 16 radio towers that span this zone in British Columbia. The location of this fence can be seen in Panel C of the figure, and so far we have fitted two hundred and forty hybrid threshers with radio tags. Example tracks from these birds are shown in green and the two Right-Hand panels.

What you can see is that these guys exhibit a ton of variation in their migratory behavior. Our next step is to harness this variation for admixture, mapping, genotyping birds, using whole genome sequencing data and an in-house bioinformatics pipeline. Ultimately, work on the genetics of behavior has lagged behind work on morphology. Nevertheless, this information is critical to ensure we have a complete picture of how adaptive phenotypic traits are control. This information will also allow us to predict of songbirds possessing enough genetic variation to respond to coming changes in their environment and established data driven conservation plans for this group.